


Fooling John Watson or That One Time when Harry Called Bullocks on Her Brother and his Flatmate

by Zigster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Harry isn't taking anymore shit, M/M, Oblivious John/Sherlock, Oblivious!Sherlock - Freeform, Pining!John, Pretend Relationship . . . maybe?, Prompt Fill, She's fixing this, Sherlock doesn't understand humans - what else is new?, Silly boys not communicating, The Watson twins in rare form, They're all in Uni together!, Unintentional pub crawl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 21:50:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigster/pseuds/Zigster
Summary: Original Prompt: Harry knows John is in love with Sherlock but won’t do anything about it. Sick of hearing her twin whine about unrequited love she tells everyone that they are dating. Sherlock doesn’t correct anyone on their comments and John is left wondering how long Sherlock thinks they’ve been dating.Actual summary: Apparently, Harry has told everyone that John is over-the-moon in love with Sherlock. John has a meltdown. Greg gets a date. Scotch is consumed. Fights are had. Sherlock shows up late and complains about being cold. Miscommunications are (sort of) discussed. John's dreams come true.





	Fooling John Watson or That One Time when Harry Called Bullocks on Her Brother and his Flatmate

Written for [H.I.A.T.U.S.](https://hiatustory.tumblr.com/) Hope is a Thoroughly Unfinished Story's January challenge: _Fake Relationship_

Not beta'd or brit-picked but well looked over. 

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* * *

 

 

 

John slams his pint down onto the mahogany bar top with a wet _thwack_ and a satisfying slosh of bitter.  “Have you gone fucking mad?”

 

A roll of eyes greets this outburst as his sister Harry twists on her stool and walks off towards the door of the pub with a cigarette poised on her lip.

 

“Oh, please.”

 

“Seriously, Harry!”

 

“Deal with it!” She calls. A blast of cold, winter air follows her as she swishes through the door with a flourish.  

 

John stares at the heavy wooden slab now separating him and his damnable sister and curses his parents for even thinking of conceiving one child, let alone ending up with bloody twins. How irresponsible can one (or two, in this case) be?

 

Downing the rest of his pint in a single gulp, he shoves a few coins across the bar, grunts a goodbye to the barkeep and heads after his insufferable git of a sibling. He catches her just outside the door, having trouble lighting up. Despite his hatred of her habit, he finds himself cupping his hands around her own, helping block the wind so the lighter is able to catch its flame and ignite.

 

“These will kill you, you know? If I don’t manage it first.”

 

“Everything will ‘kill you’ nowadays. It’s why I live life to the fullest. And why you’ll be thanking me in the very near future.”

 

His anger flares again and he steps back and shoves his fisted hands into his jacket pockets so as to not box his sister round the ears with them.

 

“You really told everyone?” He begins to pace as the amount of people he’s referring to sinks in. “Literally, everyone?”

 

Harry smiles at John, her grin a mirror of his own on better days, and he growls out into the winter air, his breath misting before him. He turns on his heels with military precision and begins to march at a steady clip down the cobbled lane away from the pub.

 

“Oi!” his sister calls after him, but he doesn’t stop, nor does he turn. He hears her heels clacking behind him just the same. “Hey, you git. These are not trainers, hold up.”

 

“It’s bloody winter. In Scotland. Get some solid footwear and stop complaining.”

 

“Oh, I’m the one who’s complaining now, am I?”

 

“I can’t believe you did this, Harry.”

 

“What?”

 

“You know what!”

 

Harry grumbles out a curse and grabs hold of her brother’s arm with characteristic Watson strength, stopping him dead in his tracks.

 

“Get off your fucking high horse, brother. You’ve been wanking your dick raw for years over this guy. Literal. Years! And I’m sick of it. That idiot you live with is as clueless today as he was the day you moved in and all you do is follow him around like a damn puppy.”

 

John scoffs as the comparison. People were always making him sound like a labrador retriever and he hated it. He was not some drooling, big-eyed, beast that threw unconditional love around like confetti, he was a man, dammit. Though, right now, he felt more like a fourteen year-old school boy who has just realised that the person he fancies has found out and is now cackling about it in the hall with all his classmates. It makes for a rather terrifying image. John decides, no matter how selfish it seems, he’s never been more fond of his flatmate’s pension for alienating people than he is in that moment. There will at least be no conspiratorial cackling over his plight and for that he is grateful.

 

“See!”

 

John blinks, bringing himself back to the present. “See what?”

 

“That. There. Your face.”

 

“What about my face?”

 

“That’s the face you make when you’re thinking about Sherlock. Which is. All. The. Time.”

 

“I do not think about Sherlock Holmes all the time!”

 

Harry just laughs at him and continues on down the lane, turns left and darts into another pub. Walking five meters in St. Andrews without coming across a public house, a hotel bar, or a roudy group of students stumbling to or from a house party is utterly impossible, John thinks, turning his eyes skyward. He both enjoys and hates that aspect of university life, though currently he's leaning more towards the hatred end of the spectrum. John follows his sister without a word. There is no way this fight is over.

 

She’s already seated at the bar, pint in hand as John slides into the spot next to her, his face a storm of emotion. She gives him one look and scoffs at his pain.

 

“Please. It’ll be fine.”

 

John laughs, short and angry. “It’s so far from fine.”

 

She dutifully ignores him as she flags down the bartender with a crisp bill in her hand and orders her baby brother a Scotch. He raises an eyebrow in question and she shrugs back in answer. “You’ll be needing your strength.”

 

He bristles immediately. “Why?”

 

“Because I texted Sherlock.”

 

John pales. “When?”

 

“Just now.”

 

“How?”

 

“This whole twenty questions thing is getting old.”

 

His fist connects with the bar top, sending coins and droplets of beer flying. “Dammit, Harry.”

 

“What? The sooner you two finally talk, the better.”

 

John is about to truly let his sister have it, when Greg Lestrade slings an arm around his shoulder. He reaches out with the same hand and frizzies his sister’s hair in greeting. “Knew I’d see you lot here. How are ya?”

 

Harry raises her pint. “Great! You?”

 

Greg does this somewhat endearing thing with his eyebrows and pretend swoons, holding onto John for support as he tips his head in the direction of a table just behind the bar. There sits Harry’s flatmate, Molly Hooper and fellow med student, Mike Stamford with a couple of yahs.*

 

“I’m in love, Harry.”

 

“Oh! Are you now?”

 

John smiles down into his Scotch glass despite himself.  

 

“Molly finally said yes to that date, huh?”

 

Greg looks amazed and steps back to take John in as if he were a true psychic marvel. “Oi! How’d you know?”

 

John simply smirks at Greg, a knowing look crinkling the corner of his eyes.

 

“Alright, yeah, fine. It’s that obvious?”

 

John nods. Greg curses under his breath and John pats him on the back for good measure. Everyone knew Greg was in love with Molly the moment she slapped Sherlock across the face in defense of him their second year. John couldn’t even be mad at the girl for doing it, since Sherlock had been in extra fine form that day with his ‘deducing’ skills on full display, and was most assuredly in need of a good smacking. He’d apologized to them both afterwards for his unwarranted and unrealised cruelty, his cheeks pink due to more than just Molly’s sharp hand, and hadn’t picked on the man since. In fact, Greg had become quite the friend to them both, more than just a mate or a bloke to have a pint with, but a true part of that strange family people tended to collect around themselves while away at University.

 

They’re all his family, John thinks. Harry, Molly, Greg, Mike . . . Sherlock.

 

And they all know.

 

All of them.

 

John downs his Scotch and orders another.

 

“Hitting it pretty hard there, John.” Greg says.

 

John raises an eyebrow at him in challenge.

 

“I’m not judging, just curious, is all.”

 

“I’ve got . . . personal shit to deal with,” John says, staring down his upturned nose at his sister, who’s matching nose is currently pointed in the direction of the ceiling, her features defiant. John thinks she resembles a smug Tinker Bell in that moment, with her pixie haircut and her stubborn smirk. It’s endearing if not infuriating.

 

“You and Sherlock have a bit of a row?”

 

John blinks, confusion over the non sequitur spilling into fury within a split second. “What?!”

 

Greg takes a step back, alarmed. “What? I was just--“

 

“Was apparently ‘just saying’ that John and I had been involved in a bit of a domestic and were concerned for our well being as a couple. How endearing of you, Lestrade.”

 

Everyone turns except John. He knows what sight will greet him as soon as he has the guts to shift in his seat and look, head on, into the eyes of the man he’d been in love with for four years. The eyes of the man who now knows that he’s been in love with him for four years. The eyes of the man who just suggested that he and John were in fact in a relationship and had had a row that morning. . . _wait, what?_

 

John spins on his stool, his mouth slack-jawed.

 

“John, you may close your mouth now.”

 

John does so without question and then glares at Sherlock for making him feel like a child.

 

Harry, meanwhile, looks like the cat who ate the canary.

 

Greg is a mixture of concerned and confused. He makes his apologies and goes back to join Molly, Mike and a few others at the table behind the bar, several pints balanced in his hands.

 

“I’ll just be--” Harry cuts herself off and slips off her stool, pack of a cigs already in her palm. Sherlock takes her seat gracefully and John watches him as he unwinds his scarf from around his long, pale, perfect neck and flattens his collar from his high-standing state, though keeps his coat tightly wrapped around him.

 

“Cold?” John asks.

 

Sherlock nods.

 

“Scotland is a barren wasteland of bitter, wet, miserable granite and I curse the day I chose this place as the establishment for my _continuing education_.”

 

“You’re just sad no one irons your shirts, provides you with free beer on the weekends, and caters to your every beck and call.”

 

Sherlock looks down his very aristocratic nose at John. “Making fun, are we?”

 

“Of your posh upbringing at that fancy boarding school of yours? Yes, I most certainly am.”

 

“We can’t all be the commonwealth, John.”

 

“Are you calling me common?”

 

Sherlock’s face softens. “Never.”

 

 _There. That_ , John thinks. It’s moments like this and statements like that, which make John’s heart hitch in his chest and his toes curl in his sturdy, practical boots. How can a man who is normally so aloof and brazen towards others’ feelings stop John Watson cold in his tracks with a single, poignant word? It’s mind-boggling, and brilliant, and wonderful and christ, he’s in so much trouble.

 

John is about to bridge the topic he’d been dreading since Harry had told him the news earlier when Greg rejoins them at the bar.

 

“I see smiling faces and John’s ears are red. Are we all back to normal, then?”

 

John scoffs and Sherlock simply nods. “Yes. Quite.”

 

“Great! I was worried about you two.”

 

John does a double take . . . _Wait? Worried? About him and Sherlock? Why?_

 

“Why would you be--”

 

“Because he cares, John. Let the man care.”

 

Greg beams, the pints he’s been enjoying, and Molly’s acceptance no doubt taking their toll.

 

“Molly was wondering if you two wanted to go to the cinema this friday?”

 

John just blinks at the man in confusion while Sherlock makes plans for them both without so much as looking at him.

 

_What the actual . . . ?_

 

It was only later, as Sherlock and John walk back (on slightly unsteady legs) to their shared flat off university grounds that John bucks up the courage to ask him what the hell is going on.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

“Yes, John?”

 

“Back there at the pub  . . . “

 

“The pub we just left.”

 

“Yes, that one.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You seemed to insinuate . . .”

 

“Insinuate that we would be agreeable to seeing a movie with Greg and Molly on Friday.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I, of course, hate those sorts of things, but you always seem to enjoy them so I thought it would be the right thing to ‘take one for the team’ as they say. Problem?”

 

“No!” John says, too emphatically. He halts in his steps, takes a deep breath and regroups. “I mean, it kinda sounded like . . . “

 

Sherlock huffs in frustration, air misting out in front of him. He turns, coat tails whirling about his legs. “Please say what you mean, John. It’s cold.”

 

John can’t help but smile at the man, but the smile quickly fades as he tries to wrangle his thoughts.

 

“Do you think we’re . . .”

 

“We’re . . .?”

 

“You know.”

 

“I know most things, John, yes, but what you’re currently trying to express is a mystery to me, which is rather infuriating, so please do spit it out. It’s cold. I want to go home.”

 

It looks as if Sherlock is two seconds away from actually stomping his foot and John loves the man even more for it.

 

“Do you think we’re in a relationship?”

 

Sherlocked stares at John, eyes fixed. John, in turn, blinks rapidly back at the man before him, his nerves skyrocketing. Hadn’t Harry told Sherlock this morning of John’s ‘unrequited pining’ as Harry had put it? Isn’t that what she meant when she said that she’d told everyone?

 

Hadn’t Sherlock been included in that umbrella statement?

 

Judging by Sherlock’s current frozen (temperature notwithstanding) state in front of him, John thinks that perhaps Harry left out that particular detail in hopes that a scenario like this would occur. Then again, Greg had so easily accepted them as a couple back at the pub (people did confuse them as such from time to time, much to John's painful chagrin) he begins to think that perhaps Harry didn’t actually tell anyone the true story. Or did she tell everyone a different story altogether? Did she cultivate this entire farce simply to push John past his sad, miserable, lonely but protected comfort zone?

 

John was most assuredly going to kill his sister.

 

Back pedaling as fast as his inebriated brain would allow, John raises his hands in front of him, “Sherlock, look--”

 

“Aren’t we?”

 

John’s mouth snaps shut so fast he practically bites his tongue. _What?_

 

“What?”

 

A large, elegant hand moves back in forth in the space between their bodies, indicating them both with the gesture. “Aren’t we . . . a couple?”

 

It’s John’s turn to stare, frozen in place. How on earth could Sherlock Holmes, the boy genius, the prodigy, the man who was going to change the world with his magnificent brain, get this aspect of his life so utterly backward? John wants to pull his hair out in frustration at the maddening amounts of miscommunication passing between them, but at the same time takes pity on the man in front of him and simply shakes his weary head.

 

“We need to get inside.”

 

Sherlock grabs John’s arm, confusion clear on his face. “John?”

 

“I can’t do this on the street.”

 

Alarms seem to go off in Sherlock’s mind for his eyes widen to an impossible degree and he steps in front of John, large hands grasping his shoulders.

 

“Don’t break up with me!”

 

John blinks at the man. For the third time that day, he finds himself utterly dumbfounded and in need of yet another scotch. What kind of rabbit hole had he fallen down this morning without his knowledge?

 

“Sherlock, I’m not ‘breaking up’ with you.”

 

Every single one of Sherlock’s sharp features relax in an instant as he sighs out a breath of relief. It warms John’s face, and he closes his eyes to the sensation. He finds himself cataloging the scents of mint from their shared tube of toothpaste and the lingering spice of scotch thanks to the sips Sherlock stole from John’s drink earlier.  

 

It’s in this state of reflection that John feels cool, dry lips touch his and his eyes blaze open in a startled mix of panic and shock. Sherlock is hesitant before him, his mouth a breath away from John’s as he searches his face for acceptance.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

His name is a misted wisp on the air, spoken in a whisper, a reverence.

 

Their lips touch again, and this time, the gasp that comes from John’s mouth is of pure amazement. Sherlock swallows the sound, surging forward like a dark wave, encircling his large, black coat around John with both arms and holding him tightly to his lithe, warm body. John gives as good as he gets, holding on for dear life in the cocoon Sherlock has made for them, and cursing the cold for not allowing him to run his hands through Sherlock’s wind-blown curls. More gasps and heavy breaths sound out into the dead of night as John lets himself be utterly and properly snogged by the man he’s loved since the moment he saw him stalking across the lawns to class all those years earlier, his coat blowing behind him like some damn Byronic hero. He was besotted then, as he is now, and John Watson, elated beyond measure, finds that he might let his sister live, after all.

 

- _fin_ - 

 

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Come find me on Tumblr if you'd like more ficlets and jonlockisms: [Zigster-Ao3](https://zigster-ao3.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> * Yahs - term for higher class students. You know, children of baristors, HRH and the like. Sherlock would most assuredly be a Yah. 
> 
> Okay, so it wasn’t so much a ‘fake relationship’ as it was a clueless one because these boys are terrible at communication and Sherlock doesn't understand social cues. I hope this still counts? The prompt led me off in this particular direction and I didn’t want to force anything, lest the whole idea fall apart. 
> 
> I set this in St. Andrews, Scotland, simply because I’m nostalgic for the place. It's beautiful. Google it. My sister studied there and has always said it was one of the happiest times of her life. The town also boasts more drinking establishments per square km than any other place in the UK. Maybe not the best place for the Watsons, but it was fun to have them all be at uni together. The age differences can still work for the most part, Sherlock being a genius would no doubt go to university early, and Greg is going for a secondary degree in criminal law. It all works out nicely. In my head, at least. I would have loved to have added more about the school and its grounds but this was running a bit long for a one-shot, so I kept the school bits brief. Hope you enjoyed it and, as always, thanks for reading!


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